Everett Garrison

Edmund Everett Garrison (b. winter of 1893, Yonkers, NY; d. February 8, 1975, Ossining, NY USA) was a structural and electrical engineer known as a maker of bamboo fly rods and co-author of ''A Master's Guide To Building A Bamboo Fly Rod''. Everett Garrison's methods and designs have been utilized by generations of bamboo fly rod makers. His rods fetch high prices from collectors.

Everett Garrison was born in Yonkers, New York in the winter of 1893. He was of Dutch ancestry. His father was an engineer who held two degrees from Columbia University. His family owned and operated a steam driven barge business along the Hudson River. Everett grew up in Yonkers and went on to study electrical engineering at Union College, where he earned a degree in 1916. He tested steel for Curtiss-Wright aircraft engines, and later became involved in railroad construction. He also lived in Staten Island and Ossining, New York. He was married to Charlotte Goff.

In 1922, Garrison met George Parker Holden, author of The Idyll of the Split-Bamboo. Initially, Everett was interested in bamboo construction as a way to improve the shafts on his golf clubs and began to visit Holden at his house in Yonkers. Both men were avid golfers, both also shared a love of fly fishing. It was there that Garrison made his first bamboo fly rods.

In 1927, when expecting his second child, Garrison suffered from a neurological malady coupled with a debilitating depression, during which time he turned to designing a new type of bamboo fly rod. Whereas other rod designers had been using empirical methods, Garrison used engineering principles to create the foundations for his revolutionary taper designs. From a hospital bed, Garrison used an understanding of casting mechanics and the physical properties of bamboo to derive a stress analysis formula to use as a basis for plotting the final dimensions of a fly rod.

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